Meet with the team!

As a leader, you will need two kinds of regular meetings: team meetings, including everyone and one-on-one meetings with each contributor. For most projects, both types will be scheduled weekly. The primary objectives for these meetings are general communications and team building; these meetings need not be lengthy.

A one-hour team meeting should be the maximum. Test the theory that your team needs to meet every week by skipping a week. If that works, reschedule the meeting to be biweekly.

Half-hour, weekly, one-on-one meetings with your team members are generally sufficient, especially if you supplement them with other frequent discussions and conversations. Weekly contact with the people on your team is really about the minimum for keeping them engaged and helping them remember that they are on your project. If your team is global, schedule each one-on-one phone meeting during your contributor’s workday, not necessarily during yours.

It’s a bad idea to meet much less than this, though. People may start to forget who is on the team.